


Stay Quiet, Stay Near

by MeghanAnna



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teachers, F/M, Fluff, Teacher Bellamy, Teacher Clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 08:51:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13431234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeghanAnna/pseuds/MeghanAnna
Summary: bff prompt: So me and my (high school) classmates are trying to set up our biology professor with another fellow coworker and I thought it would be a nice Bellarke prompt.





	Stay Quiet, Stay Near

**Author's Note:**

> My god. I write a lot of fluff these days.

 

“Hey,” Clarke says, poking her head into Bellamy’s classroom. He looks up from his lesson plan and smiles quickly. “I forgot I had bus duty today, so do you mind waiting a little while until we leave?”

“That’s fine. I can get some grading done,” he promises, closing his laptop as students squeeze past Clarke to sit down.

“Awesome. I’ll grab you when I’m done and we can just head straight to the bar.”

“Sounds good. Have a good day.” Clarke’s smile is bright and wide as she turns to leave with a wave over her shoulder. As usual, he has a hard time looking away. That is, until one of his students clears their throat from the other side of his desk.  “Good Morning, Charlotte.”

“Did you finally ask her out?” she asks excitedly and Bellamy’s eyes widen as he looks around his classroom to see if any of the other kids are listening. Thankfully, most of his sophomores are more interested in their own lives than his. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“ _ Miss Griffin _ ,” she answers, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Fox thinks you guys have been together since last year, but I told her I didn’t think so.”

“I’m not dating Miss Griffin, Charlotte,” he tells her after a minute of staring dumbly at her. “But if I were,” he says, a little more confidently, “I don’t think our students would be the first to know.”

Charlotte just rolls her eyes and goes to sit in her seat just as the bell rings. 

Bellamy’s not surprised, exactly, that his students might think something is going on between him and Clarke. They’ve been friends since college—when he was a senior and she was a sophomore, living with his sister. She finished her bachelors a semester before he finished his masters and they started working at the same school, the same year. Of course they’re close. Their friends have called them out about it for years. So, no, he’s not surprised his students would start to either. 

They don’t see each other that often throughout the day, though. She teaches art, on the opposite side of the school, two floors below his history classroom. They eat lunch together and sometimes—like today—they carpool. Clarke being in his classroom this morning isn’t a normal occurrence, but kids have wild imaginations and can create all kinds of scenarios when something interests them.

He just wishes they weren’t interested in  _ his life _ .

\--

Clarke has been a high school art teacher for a little over a year. She likes teaching and, for the most part, her students enjoy art. There are always a select few that just needed an elective and thought they’d go for an easy A, but even then, they like Clarke. And Clarke likes them. 

It’s not a huge school, so she teaches all of the art classes they offer, except for photography, which was never her strong point. Because of this, though, she’s been teaching the same group of students since she started. Her friends aren’t interested in art, so she likes that these kids want to talk about it and learn everything they can. Clarke’s a young teacher, too, which always helps being liked by students. They feel like they’re her friend. She wouldn’t consider any of her students friends, but it makes her smile knowing they like her. 

But then Madi sits on top of her desk, crossing her legs and studying Clarke hard, and she gets a little nervous. “What’s up?” 

“You’re  _ not _ dating Mr. Blake?” she asks, collapsing into herself a little and Clarke actually laughs. “It’s not funny! I had money on this!”

“Pro tip: Don’t tell your teacher that you’re making bets on  _ anything _ , but especially don’t tell them you’re making bets on their  _ love life _ ,” Clarke says, still laughing. “Why would you ever think I was dating Bell—Mr. Blake?”

“He’s hot,” Madi says matter-of-factly. Clarke knows this—she’s always known this—but it’s not nearly enough of an explanation. 

“Madi,” Clarke tries one last time. She checks the clock over the junior’s shoulder and sees they have a few minutes until the warning bell sounds and the rest of the class joins them. She wants to get to the bottom of this, but she also doesn’t want any of the other kids to listen in. She doesn’t need her completely platonic relationship with Bellamy to become some big, dramatic high school rumor. They are  _ adults _ , after all.

“We always see you leaving the cafeteria at lunch, just the two of you laughing and smiling on your way to the teacher’s lounge,” Madi explains, animated. “And you guys were in his class talking about going to a bar tonight!”

“How did you know that? His morning class is all sophomores.”

“I have friends, Miss Griffin,” the girl scoffs and Clarke rolls her eyes. 

“We’re friends, not that it’s anyone’s business. We’ve been friends since college. We’re going to dinner with  _ his sister _ . She was my college roommate.”

“That’s so, spectacularly boring.” Madi slides off her desk and into the seat behind it as the warning bell rings and the conversation is decidedly over.

But Clarke can’t help but think about it all the way through bus duty.

\--

The halls have been quiet for nearly an hour when Bellamy looks up to see Miller walking into his classroom. “I thought you and Clarke had plans with your sister tonight,” he says, leaning casually against a desk in the first row. “What are you still doing here?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. He saw the last bus pull out of the lot about fifteen minutes ago and hasn’t seen or heard from Clarke yet. “She had bus duty, but maybe she got caught up with something on her way up. Why are you still here?”

“We had a drama meeting right after last bell,” Miller explains. He looks like he’s going to say more, but Bellamy stops him with a loud sigh. “You okay, buddy?”

He thinks about that for a second. He’s fine, of course. It’s just been a weird day since Clarke left his classroom and Charlotte brought up his relationship with her. He’s taught four classes today and in  _ each  _ one, a different student has said something. Only two to his face, but he heard the other two conversations just as clearly. Like they  _ meant  _ for him to hear. 

“Have you heard anything about me and Clarke today?” he asks finally and Miller only smiles. “You have, haven’t you?”

“Dude,” he laughs, but Bellamy just keeps staring at him. “They know we’re friends! And they know you’re friends with Clarke. They’re teenagers, not idiots.”

“There is nothing going on with me and Clarke.”

“ _ I  _ know that, but they just see two good looking people getting along and making heart eyes at each other when they walk down the hallway together.”

“We don’t make heart eyes.” 

“You do.” 

Arguing about this will get Bellamy nowhere—it never has—so, he changes tactics. “What did they say to you? And who said it?”

“I’m not snitching on my students, dude,” Miller tells him, hands up in defense. Bellamy respects that, but he still wants to know who else is talking about him. 

“Hey, you ready?” Clarke asks as she enters the room and she smiles at Miller. “Hey. Want to come to dinner?”

“Can’t,” he tells her before he shoots a quick look at Bellamy. “Date with Monty.”

“Have fun!” 

“You, too,” he says, and then he’s gone and it’s just Bellamy and Clarke. 

“Ready?” she asks again, looking down at her phone. “Octavia’s going to meet us at the bar. Our dinner reservations are at 6. Lincoln will meet us at the restaurant.”

“Sounds good.”

\--

The ride to the bar is abnormally quiet. And Clarke is well aware that it’s  _ her  _ fault. Every time Bellamy has tried to talk to her, she’s answered him with quick, one-word answers or—worse—a silent shrug. She can’t look him in the eye. She can’t look at him at all. 

What she was afraid of when she was talking to Madi seems to have come true over the course of one day. She and Bellamy are two adults in the center of some weird, dramatic high school folklore. She heard their names mumbled in the hallway on her way to the cafeteria  _ three times _ and it was enough to send her off campus for lunch. One other girl straight out asked her if they were dating. And Clarke has no idea why all of this is happening now. 

She and Bellamy have been friends since long before they started working together. As far as their students can see, they’ve spent the same amount of time together since that first day teaching. There’s no conceivable reason this rumor should be spreading now. What’s more is, she has no idea why it’s  _ bothering  _ her so much. They’ve dealt with ridicule from their friends since college. They’re close and they get along. It doesn’t mean that they’re dating or in love. It never has.

Except… for the last year and a half, Clarke and Bellamy have gotten closer. Working together and living just minutes from each other has strengthened their relationship. While she doesn’t think Bellamy sees a difference in anything, Clarke is pretty sure she’s half-way in love with him already. Bellamy’s her person—the one she calls when she wants to have a cozy movie night in, or the one that wakes her up early on Sunday so they can get their favorite table for breakfast. 

“Are you okay?” he asks her finally, after way too long of a silence. 

“I think so,” she says with a heavy sigh. “Weird day.”

“You’re telling me.”

That makes her look at him, once and for all. She’s just glad his eyes are focused on the road, because she’s sure hers are wide and vulnerable. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it?” she asks softly and he lifts a hand off the wheel to run it through his hair. She can’t help but smile. When he picked her up that morning, his hair was tame—like every morning—and now it’s wild and his curls are out of control—like every afternoon. He always runs his hand through his hair when he’s teaching, getting passionate about some war or some ancient civilization. He does it when he’s nervous, too, though. 

“You know Charlotte Chance, right?” 

She knew that’s what he was talking about, but she still wasn’t ready for it. “I sure do. She’s in my fifth period pottery class.”

He looks at her quickly, no doubt hearing the edge in her voice. “She talk to you today? About anything… special?”

“Well, she’s very upset that you and I aren’t sleeping together.” Bellamy chokes at that, just a little, just enough to make Clarke smile again. “Her and a few other kids, it seems.”

“It’s weird, right?” he asks, running that same hand through his hair again. “Why are they so interested? Don’t they know how boring our lives actually are?”

“It’s definitely weird. I feel like I’m  _ in  _ high school again.”

“God, me too. Once was enough.”

\--

They don’t talk about it much more in the car. Bellamy changes the subject once they’re walking into the bar. The last thing they need is for Octavia to know what’s going on and make it even worse. 

She’s already sitting at the bar, talking to Gina, when Bellamy and Clarke find her and Bellamy takes one last lingering look at Clarke before they’re thrown to the wolves. Or, more accurately, to his sister.

“How was school?” Octavia asks as they sit down on either side of her. 

“Fine,” they say in unison, almost like it was rehearsed. Bellamy smirks to himself, looking down at the bar. He can feel Octavia watching him. 

“We need drinks,” Clarke announces, hands hitting the bar hard. Gina delivers them their usual orders and Clarke thanks her emphatically. “So, what’s all of this about? Why was it so important for the four of us to have dinner tonight?”

Bellamy looks up at his sister and she’s already taking a long sip of her drink. It makes him sit up a little taller—nervously. It’s been awhile since Octavia calling to see him has made him nervous. It never even crossed his mind this time around, but now he wishes it had. He would have been prepared for whatever’s coming next.

“We’re moving.”

“You’re what?” Clarke demands, a little too loudly. 

“Calm down. Bell’s the one who I thought would be freaking out,” his sister says before turning to look at him. He’s still, staring at her with an open mouth. He didn’t know what to expect—he didn’t have any warning to think of all the possibilities—but moving wouldn’t have been on his list. She and Lincoln met in this town. Lincoln’s lived here his whole life. They have friends and family here. 

“Where?” 

“Texas.”

“ _ Texas? _ ” Clarke is still yelling and—despite that—Bellamy is relieved she’s there, even if they did have a long, strange day at school. 

“Yes.” His sister rolls her eyes and runs her hand through her long, straight hair, grasping it tightly for a second before letting it fall against her shoulder. “I got a job offer and Lincoln’s wanted to move for a while, so he’s looking for jobs out there. It’s a good opportunity. I can’t pass it up.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy hums, swallowing hard. His sister is  _ moving _ —halfway across the country. “No, I guess not. That’s great, O.”

“At least pretend to be excited for me, Big Brother.”

“Give me a minute.”

“ _ Texas _ ,” Clarke whispers again, shaking her head before taking a drink. “Texas?”

“Stop saying Texas,” Bellamy and his sister tell her together. 

“It’s so far. We’re never going to see you. Bellamy’s never going to stop whining about it.”

“You’re the one whining!” he reminds her.

“Yeah, in anticipation of your nonstop whining,” she argues and Octavia sighs. 

“I think the two of you will be just fine,” she tells them. “You can miss me together. You already do everything else together.”

“Don’t,” Bellamy warns, voice a little harsher than he meant it. Octavia looks at him, surprised.

“Weird day,” Clarke says again, only confusing Octavia even more.

“What happened?”

“Kids are cruel,” Clarke tells her. “Even when they don’t mean to be.”

\--

“Kids are cruel?” Bellamy asks hours later when it’s just the two of them in the car again. They talked about Octavia and Lincoln moving all through dinner, it’s the first chance he’s had to bring it up.

“They are,” she tells him. And she means it, just like she meant it when she told Octavia at the bar. “Kids are cruel. They get into your head and they just screw everything up.”

She watches Bellamy consider that, his hands on the wheel. He hasn’t started the car, but he’s looking out the windshield as if they were stuck in a line of traffic. She can’t look away and he can’t look at her. 

“Do we need to talk about this?” he asks her carefully, like he doesn’t want to even think about it, let alone talk about it. 

“We might have to,” she says, thinking about what a weekend of gossip can cause when they walk into school on Monday morning. “If they keep talking about it, Principle Kane is going to find out. We need to be prepared for that.”

“Yeah, you might be right.” He sighs and starts the car, but doesn’t say anything else. He just drives and Clarke just stares, waiting for him to say something—anything. He doesn’t.

“I thought we were going to talk about this?”

“We are,” he says, glancing at her quickly. “But my little sister just told me she’s moving to Texas in two weeks and my best friend wants to talk about how our students are spreading rumors about us. I need another drink.”

Clarke nods—it’s only fair. It’s been a long day. She could use another drink, too. 

When he gets to her apartment building, he pulls into a spot instead of just dropping her off and she smiles. “I’ve got beer,” she tells him. “And vodka, if you need something a little stronger.”

“Perfect.”

Inside, Bellamy flops onto her couch and it tells Clarke just enough for her to know she should grab the vodka and a couple of shot glasses. When she sits down next to him, he takes the bottle from her hand as she sets the glasses on the coffee table. “One drink now,” she says as he starts to pour. “Then we need to talk, right?”

“Yes.” Bellamy hands her a shot glass carefully and they silently clink them together. Clarke’s eyes don’t leave his face even as they knock back the shots. She thinks he’s looking at her pretty intensely, too.

“School or Octavia?” she asks and she’s not surprised at his strangled sigh. None of this is easy.

“Us,” he decides. It surprises her, even though that is exactly what they need to talk about. 

“Okay,” she breathes. “Us.”

“There isn’t an  _ us _ . Right?”

\--

He’s not sure why he’s asking. There  _ isn’t _ . There never has been. But… maybe there could be.

Clarke groans, her face falling into her hands. “No, but people think there is.”

Bellamy sits up, moving just a touch closer to her. “Do we care what people think?”

“I care what  _ you  _ think.”

He smiles and her face flushes. Bellamy’s always liked when he’s able to make her do that. “I care what you think, too.”

“Bellamy,” she huffs, reaching toward him and he only remembers he’s still wearing a tie when her fingers brush over it near his chest. “Tell me what you think.”

“I think it was bound to happen, sooner or later. I think teenagers are hopped up on hormones and they make up these crazy, romantic stories in their head. And I think,” he pauses, watching her hand on his tie, clutched tighter now, “I’m kind of happy they said something.”

Clarke laughs and looks up from her own hand to his face. “No, you’re not. You hate when they get personal with you.”

“Well, yeah,” he admits, scratching at the back of his head. “But, at least  _ we’re _ talking about it. What do you think?”

“I think it’s good we’re talking about it, too. You’re my best friend,” she says it so definitively, like there’s no one else in the world who could possibly fill that role in her life. He feels the same about her. “I don’t want to lose that, especially with Octavia leaving. I don’t want to lose two Blakes in one day.”

“You’re not going to lose me, Clarke. Do you really think that’s even an option?”

“It could happen. We’ve always just brushed this kind of thing off. I figured it was because you didn’t want to think of me in that way.”

“Yeah, me too,” he admits. It’s been easy to brush it off with their friends, or even strangers who meet them. Kids are relentless, though. They won’t let this go and it will just make everything more difficult the longer it goes on. “But clearly something is going on.”

“Clearly.” She pulls her hands into her lap and turns her whole body toward his, taking a deep breath. “I like you, Bellamy. As more than a best friend. I have for a while now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner and I’m  _ really  _ sorry a bunch of high schoolers forced me to do it.”

Bellamy can’t keep his smile in check. Clarke still looks a little nervous, but at least she’s smiling, too. He opens his mouth to say something, but there are too many words. He’s been falling in love with her for years now. He’s been in denial about it, but he’s well aware now that it’s been happening all along. He doesn’t know where to start.

So, he kisses her. It’s quick and tentative, but when he pulls back to see her reaction, she’s already leaning in for another kiss.

\--

In the teacher’s parking lot on Monday morning, Clarke can’t make herself get out of Bellamy’s car. They spent the weekend locked in her apartment and she doesn’t want to break that spell and get back to reality. She’s liked having him all to herself. She’s not ready to share him with anyone, let alone the entire school.

“Okay,” he says finally, leaning into kiss her again. “We need to go.”

She knows he’s right. They can see the student lot filling up with cars and the buses are pulling out of the loop already. They need to get inside and they need to get as far away from each other as possible, since they can’t seem to stop touching each other now. 

“We do,” she agrees, pulling her hands to her own side of the car. “Should we go in separately?”

“That’s weirder than us going in at the same time,” he reasons. “We’ve always walked in together, even when we don’t drive together.”

“You’re right,” she tells him and then she kisses him, because in one weekend it’s become a habit. She kisses him now—whenever the hell she wants to. 

But then she hears a squeal and they pull apart and look outside. 

Three teenage girls are watching them through the windshield, faces alight with excitement. “Get out,” Bellamy tells her, and they both do. “Ladies.”

“I knew it,” Fox says, crossing her arms.

“You knew nothing!” Charlotte argues. “This is a new development. Isn’t it, Mr. Blake?”

“Have a nice day,” he tells them, ignoring them as best he can.

“Miss Griffin!” Madi calls after them and she stops and turns just her head. By the look on the girl’s face, Clarke thinks this might have been her plan all along—meddle just enough to make the two of them talk. “Dinner wasn’t so boring, after all, huh?”

“I’ll see you in class,” she says, running to catch up with Bellamy. She makes sure she keeps at least a foot between them as they walk inside. “We’re bad at this.”

“We never said we’d be good at it.”

“We really need to tell Kane now,” Clarke reminds him and he throws his head back, groaning. “We’ll probably have to sign papers or something.”

“That sounds like a lot of work,” he tells her. “Too much work, honestly.”

“Well, it was fun while it lasted,” she teases and he reaches out to quickly squeeze her hand before opening the door for her. 

“I think if we head to his office now, we can still make homeroom,” he offers and she wants to kiss him again, but she stops herself this time. 

“I like you,” she tells him instead and he smiles over at her quickly. It’s just quick enough that no one else would see it. He has a reputation to maintain, after all.

“I like you, too, but you need to stop looking at me like that,” he warns and she scoffs. She’s not looking at him any differently than she was a week ago. “Miller already called us out on the heart eyes.”

“Yeah, because he and Monty are always  _ so  _ subtle.”

“They were when they weren’t actually dating. He called us out on it  _ last week _ .”

“Yeah, well I liked you last week,” she reminds him and he shrugs, reaching for the strap of his messenger bag. She thinks it might be his way of keeping his hand away from her as they walk through the halls together. There aren’t many students around, but there are enough. “Contrary to the façade you put up in this school, you’re actually pretty likable.”

“At least they still think I’m hot.”

Clarke laughs, remembering his horrified reaction when she told him that Madi said he was hot. “At least there’s that,” she agrees. 

Once the office comes into view, they slow down and their smiles fall. “He can’t make us break up, can he?” Bellamy wonders quietly. 

“I don’t think so.” They stop completely outside of the door, even though it’s a glass office and the secretary is looking at them like they’re crazy. “We should just get in there and rip the band-aid off.”

“I’d kiss you good luck, but I don’t think it would help our chances.”

“We’ll celebrate after school,” Clarke says, reaching for the door handle. “ _ Far away _ from any students or other faculty.”

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!
> 
> Come find me on [Tumblr](http://bellamyfrecklefaceblake.tumblr.com)!


End file.
